The §9-515 lapse clock
Every equipment lien has an expiry date. Almost nobody is watching it.
A UCC-1 runs five years. A continuation can only be filed in the final six months. An active lien inside that window with no continuation on file is a payoff or a refinance in flight — and it is not a record any state publishes. It is the absence of one, noticed as a date passes.
We run that clock nightly across every state we hold, against filings resolved to real lenders rather than to forty spellings of the same name.
What is in the database today
Counts come from the event spine, refreshed by the scheduled ingest — nightly for the lapse clock, weekly for the full state refresh.
Why a free public file is not the same product
Most of this data is downloadable from the states for nothing. That is the point — the raw records are not what is scarce.
The clock cannot be backfilled
A snapshot tells you which liens exist. It cannot tell you which ones crossed into their final six months, because that needs the history and a job that has been running every night through it. Starting today does not recover yesterday.
Names are not entities
A state file has the lender as the filer typed it. “Alert me when this lender files” is unanswerable until every spelling folds onto one entity — which is also the only way a league table means anything.
One state is a silo
A debtor resolved across states gives you the lien stack — what else is already filed against this business. No single Secretary of State can sell you that, at any price.
Coverage
Four states live, each with the caveat that belongs next to it. We would rather tell you where the file is thin than have you find out from a customer.
- California
Secretary of State bulk Data Request (bizfile Online) · Weekly
- Colorado
Colorado Open Data (Socrata) · Refreshed about daily
- Connecticut
Connecticut Open Data (Socrata) · Nightly
- Oregon
Oregon Open Data (Socrata) · Weekly pull of a rolling window